SURKIN
Surkin is 26, lives in Paris and makes music for a living for half a decade. Brown hair cut short, creative teeth, smokes, somewhat gourmet, high-technology early adopter. Looks way too young for his age so never goes out without his ID. Has a soft spot for Swiss and Japanese graphic design, early CGI, vintage bullet hell shoot’em ups and Wired magazine iPad application. Government name : Benoît Heitz.

His first taste of dance music came from Detroit ghetto tech, a genre he got so excited about as a teen that he launched a website featuring his own mixed selections. Then came Miami bass, Chicago house and the whole spectrum.In 2006, he signed with Parisian label Institubes, on which he released six EPs in the following years, including the hits Ghetto Obsession, Radio Fireworks, White Knight Two and Fan Out. With labelmate Bobmo, he also formed High Powered Boys, a duo originally dedicated to the furthering of the ghetto-
house cause.Surkin has played everywhere, from small clubs and warehouses to huge festivals (Fuji Rock, Good Vibrations, Primavera, Coachella – twice! - Stereosonic, SummerSonic...) and toured Australia, North America, Europe, UK and Japan several times. As a DJ, he’s known for his quicksilver,transhistorical mixing style, layering hysterical vocal house, cubist tracky UK bass, French touch sounds and US ghetto cuts. He’s also a noted remixer (Boys Noize, Klaxons, Paul Johnson, Foals, Justice, The Juan Maclean...) and was asked in 2009 to reinterpret the score of one of his favorite games, Bionic Commando (Capcom).

Then in early 2011, Institubes closed down and Surkin, along with Bobmo and other former Institubes artist Para One, decided to set up their own label, called Marble, championing a sound conciling straight-forward four-to-the-floor ethos and more disjointed, yet hyperproficient grooves. Apart from themselves – they form a trio called Marble Players who already did two critically acclaimed EPs – , the roster includes French newcomers Sam Tiba, Canblaster and Myd, from the Club Cheval crew. Two huge High Powered Boys EPs were released in early 2011,

one on Marble and one on their Thermal Team friends’ label Sound Pellegrino– both in a minimalistic, dystopian party breaks style.
In october, Marble will release Surkin’s highly anticipated debut album, just called USA. It’s a stunning, exuberant record, working perfectly on dancefloors but also while driving the city or hanging in the streets. It’s a fantasmagorical, epic record, based on imaginary memories of eighties urban America, a world Surkin has only known through pop culture and other distorted perceptions. So it’s clearly not about paying servile homage to some lost and mourned era, and all about activating personal aural fantasies of a past that’s actually never happened. Surkin is basically doing extreme customizing of existing sounds, adding his euphorical touch to early house, NYC freestyle, Miami bass or YMO electropop. And the result is an exhilarating ride into a novelty-rammed soundscape.